This week we finally get around to discussing the August AggroChat Game Club title, The Witness. The game has been called a bunch of things, but the most common assessment has related it to Myst. We discuss why this is probably a bad comparison among other things. This absolutely clicked with some of our team, and others bounced super hard off of the title. Much discussion is had however and that was the entire point of doing a Game Club so it feels like this title was an absolute success. Join us as we delve into the game in a spoilery journey into The Witness.

This week we have a bizarre show that somehow covers a lot of content without us actually realizing it. Since Tam and Kodra attended Pax West last week we went into a discussion about all of the stuff they saw there. From there we branch out into a discussion about Guild Wars 2 and Tam recently picking the game up after talking to a friend about it. We largely discuss how the game has improved since launch and that Tam, Ash and Kodra are enjoying in it. Finally we wrap up the evening talking about World of Warcraft Legion and some of the experiences Grace and Belghast have after hitting the new level cap and experiencing World Quests.

Tonight we are down a Tam thanks to Pax West Shennanigans, and in theory at least we will be talking soon about those experiences. However for the time being… we talk a bunch of stuff but mostly World of Warcraft Legion. Right now Ashgar, Belghast and Grace are playing… and talk about their experiences with the launch, and the revisions to the game. The long story short is that we all seem to be enjoying ourselves. The main story is still frustrating, but the sub stories are amazing. We also talk a little bit about the game of the month Tales of Maj’Eyal, largely related to a few tips for getting started and things that players should really avoid getting bogged down in. Finally Kodra talks about his experiences with Dues Ex and Necropolis in recent play sessions for both.

This evening we were originally planning on recording the AggroChat Game Club show for The Witness. However as we got close to recording events happened, and we will be rescheduling that later this month. That said the September game is announced in this show, and from that point onwards we charted a destination through madness. This is one of those super meandering shows, that covered a bunch of only semi-related topics.

It feels like every week I say “something weird happened” when describing our podcast. I might simply be that we have no real “normal” state to fall back on, and that everything is essentially new and strange. That said I feel like this week is on an island of its own. After last week’s podcast I had a listener pull me aside and comment that it sounded like it physically pained us to talk about Warcraft. I personally didn’t realize this until I went back and listened a bit, and I can absolutely see how someone could have that take away. More often than not we just have super confused feelings about the game, and tonight we delve into this… and it leads to a whole sequence of topics including the loss of “junk culture” and the businessification of things we love. For some of us you definitely can’t ever truly go back home.

This week we inadvertently have a show about things that are not quite prepared in one way or another. First up we talk about our frustrations with the Broke Shore cinematics for both the Alliance and Horde in World of Warcraft. We also talk about the positive things that this event is bringing, but mostly frustrations about the turn in the story. We talk about the fraught PC launch of No Man’s Sky and how Belghast is the only member of our crew able to actually get it running on his machine. However since he could we talk at length about his experiences. All of the NMS talk got Kodra amped to play some Starbound on our private server. We talk a little bit of Diablo Season 7 and how we were not quite prepared for it with everything else going on… so we ended up rolling an army of demon hunters for speed clearing. Finally we talk about how Final Fantasy XV seems to be delayed once more, as details have been leaked on how to update the date on the big retail standees. So much not preparedness to go around, caused us to record an extremely long show.

After putting it off a week due to folks travelling, this week we record the July AggroChat Game Club show for our title of the month Cities: Skylines. In this episode we talk about just how deep the rabbit hole of simulation goes with this would be king of city and mayor simulators. In many ways this show is the tail of many failed cities and a handful of successful ones. It is also when we learn just how bad of a mayor Belghast would be. This title is the heir to the Sim City lineage, so we ask the question how it stacks up. We also ask the question if city simulation is really that fun? Additionally we get into a side tangent about wastewater management.

This week we are down both Ashgar and Kodra, and in part as a result… and part because we just adore her we talked our friend Neph into joining us. Before we start recording a podcast we generally try and scribble down a rough list of topics to use as an outline of where to leave the conversation next. After fifteen minutes of dead air… we finally start coming up with a few things and this weeks show is a result. We talk about the concept of “Peak Pokemon” and the glee that the media seems to have at heralding the downfall of the game. With Grace on my side we revisit the discussion about the Legion class changes, and our happiness to completely bury the concept of the Garrison and get out into the world and see it again. We do a deeper dive into the deepest dungeon in Final Fantasy XIV and Tam and Neph’s experiences leveling alts this week there. We talk a little bit about Dragon Age Inquisition, and my discovery of how Damage over Time classes work. So for a show where we didn’t think we had much to say… we certainly said a whole lot of it.

This week we had a really strange sequence of events that lead to quite literally half of our crew being out for one reason or another. Of all of them I think we happen to be the most jealous of Grace who managed to score tickets to the Final Fantasy Symphony tour thing that is roaming the country. This was the week of big patches with both the 3.35 patch in Final Fantasy XIV bringing us the Palace of the Dead, and World of Warcraft getting 7.0.3 containing all of the Legion class changes and new Transmog system. Additionally we saw the actual launch of Starbound and with it something unusual in the early access community… significant changes being patched into the final version. So this week we have a whole slew of topics related to all of those points.

This marks the second week of the majority of our cast being completely enthralled by the apparent phenomenon that is Pokemon Go. So as you would expect this weeks episode is a hefty bit of our hosts recounting their recent experiences. Pokemon Go is a story engine, and we have many stories to tell as a result. Additionally we talk a bit about Augmented Reality gaming in general, and whether or not Pokemon Go is the "Everquest" or the "World of Warcraft" of this genre. This week also saw us "getting the band back together" as it were and raiding for the first time in months in Final Fantasy XIV. We discuss our feeling about raiding again and the hopes of what we might accomplish in the coming months.

Grace and Bel made their way into the Legion Beta finally for World of Warcraft so we discuss a bit in the way of the set up for that expansion. Bel talks at length about his experiences playing a Demon Hunter and why he thinks this might be a class Tam would actually like. Tam deftly deflects and turns the discussion back around to the story of Final Fantasy XIV and our feelings about what seems to be the wrapping of this expansion. In other news we discuss two similar gaming experiences in Necropolis and the brand new chapter of the Monster Hunter saga. Finally we get into a length discussion about the ramifications of Pokemon Go and what it might mean for Nintendo and accepting that the mobile platform is actually viable.